Nesta Macdonald, who has died aged 100, challenged much received wisdom about the history of the Ballets Russes with her book, Diaghilev Observed by Critics in England and the United States 1911-1929 (1975). She was a meticulous researcher who always went to primary sources. However, she was also a perfectionist whose determination to get every fact right prevented the publication of further important books.
Nesta was introduced to the ballet when her mother Anna (nee Arnott), a ballet enthusiast, took her to watch the Ballets Russes at the London Coliseum in 1918-19. In the 1950s, she became friends with the widowed Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina, whom she encouraged to write important articles on her career with the Russian ballet. Having helped by typing and editing articles, Nesta started offering her own work to magazines, and her writing career took off from there.
In addition to her work on Ballets Russes, Nesta focused her attention on Isadora Duncan. Having published a series of articles on Duncan in Dance magazine in 1977 she worked on what should have been a definitive biography. However, it failed to appear as she was forever discovering more details.
She was born Ernestine Rosse near Regent’s Park in London. Her father, Henry, a businessman, died shortly after she was born in the flu outbreak after the first world war, and Nesta was brought up by her mother and an unmarried aunt. She attended Grey Coat Hospital school before training at Chelsea College of Physical Education to become a teacher of gymnastics. In 1940 she married Donald Macdonald, a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps, but this did not last long and they divorced in 1948. In the 1950s she bought and sold antiques and took up photography; photographs by Nesta are included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery.
She published a booklet on the Pheasantry, a building on King’s Road in Chelsea, and mounted the exhibition Diaghilev in Chelsea at Chelsea town hall in 1979. In 1990, her radio play, Lawrence Among the Swells, concerning DH Lawrence’s relationship with Grace Lovat Fraser and Harriet Cohen, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She received a Nijinsky medal from the Polish Artists Agency and travelled to Perm in Russia, the former home of the Diaghilev family.
Nesta donated rare Russian material she had acquired during the course of her research to the Brotherston Library at Leeds University. She also gave documents, photographs, and a bust of the Russian ballet teacher Serafina Astafieva to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
